Book Recounts Marriage Fight in Massachusetts

Â Â Â Cynthia Laird of the Bay Area Reporter makes the connection between our struggle in Massachusetts for marriage equality and the continuing struggle in California. She sees Courting Equality as a way forÂ gay marriage advocates to share strategies that worked and to take heart thatÂ full equality is not just a hope. Laird is particularly impressed with the photographic work of Marilyn Humphries. Read on . . .Â

Bay Area Reporter
Published 07/12/2007
by Cynthia Laird
With the marriage equality battle heating up in California, same-sex couples and others might want to check out Courting Equality , a coffee-table book that recounts the battle for gay marriage in Massachusetts.

Released in May to coincide with the three-year anniversary of legal marriage in Massachusetts, Courting Equality (Beacon Press, $34.95) contains more than 100 photos by photographer Marilyn Humphries, with a detailed history by co-authors and spouses Patricia A. Gozemba and Karen Kahn.

In a telephone interview last week, Gozemba, 66, said that she and Kahn, 51, were familiar with Humphries’s photography work well before embarking on the collaboration. But it was a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Evelyn White, who suggested that they do a book, she said.

“The photos were at the heart of the whole thing,” Gozemba said. “Marilyn’s been in Boston for the last 27 years, documenting our community.” More